


Only Say Goodnight

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s08e21 Existence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 00:12:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17776874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: I have always been upset that we didn’t get to see Mulder and Scully’s moment together right after William was born. This is my hand at that scene and the one that followed, when Mulder left.





	1. Mulder

**Author's Note:**

> I have always been upset that we didn’t get to see Mulder and Scully’s moment together right after William was born. This is my hand at that scene and the one that followed, when Mulder left.

Mulder jumped out of the helicopter just as all the cars were all taking off,  frantically looking in each one as it passed, calling her name.

Too late, he was too late. They took her. They took the baby.

Reyes called out to him, caught his attention as he was about to lose it – to absolutely lose his mind.

“Mulder!”

He turned on his heel so fast he almost lost balance and fell. He ran toward her.

“How is she?!”

“She’s inside.”

That’s not what he asked.   _That’s not what he asked!_ He was frantic, the noise of the helicopter rotors whirled and pulsed, the hammering of his heart keeping tempo with them.

He pushed past her without stopping when she grabbed his arm.

“She needs to get to a hospital.”

His stomach fell to his knees. He gave Reyes one last look and then pushed his way into the ramshackle building.

It was immediately quieter when he entered. That was the first thing he noticed.

The lighting was bad, he couldn’t see anything at first, and then candlelight shifted and caught on her titian hair, rising just above makeshift covers on an old iron daybed. Her eyes were closed--he moved quickly to her side.

He fell to his knees next to the bed, only then noticing the bundle on her chest. His breath left him, just as if he’d been hit, hard and true to the solar plexus.

She was safe. The baby was with her.

“Mulder.”

Her voice was weak when she said it, but she opened her eyes and her smile blossomed all the way up to them.

“Hi,” he said lamely, shortly, still not quite able to breathe. “Is it…?”

His eyes traveled to the bundle resting in Scully’s arms and she followed his gaze and then looked back to him.

“It’s a boy,” she said, “he’s okay.”

He reached out tentatively to touch him, and the warmth and solidity of the baby shocked him so much he pulled his hand back.

“You have a son, Mulder,” Scully said then, and Mulder turned back to her, ran a hand down her cheek. The sweat was cooling on her face and Mulder noticed then that she looked pale --remembered what Reyes had told him on his way into the building.

“Are you okay?” He said, tension creeping back into his voice. His heart started back up again, he could feel it.

“I’m still bleeding,” she said quietly.

“I…” Mulder looked around, searching for something that could help, anything. “I have a helicopter. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

She nodded weakly and closed her eyes.

“Can you stand, Scully?” He said. “Can you walk?”

She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. He was losing her.

He hoisted her up, her and the baby, blankets and all.

He wouldn’t remember it later – carrying his new little family through the dusty empty streets. What he would remember, with a harsh pang of anguish and regret, was the crew telling him he couldn’t fit with Scully and the baby in the back, that if he wanted to ride with them at all it would have to be in the cockpit, in the seat he’d ridden in on.

The whole ride, he’d craned his head like a meerkat, trying to see her, see the baby, but she was strapped in behind his seat and his headset kept knocking into it, getting skewed and knocked off, the sound of the engine roaring into his ears.

And then they landed and she and the baby were unloaded; she on a stretcher, he in a waiting nurse’s arms, and then down an elevator and before he knew it, they were whisked off in different directions and he wasn’t allowed to follow either of them.

Scully was in surgery to repair a tear and address her bleeding and the baby had to be taken into the NICU for observation and he heard something about a pitocin injection and vitamin K and a heel prick but it all sounded hollow to his ears like he was underwater and he wasn’t sure who was getting what.

Reyes showed up some time later with Skinner and Doggett and she took one look at Mulder and ushered him into a waiting room chair and shoved a cup of coffee into his hands and talked to him about helping her figure out how to get Scully and the baby back to Maryland and it occurred to him then he lived in Virginia and that he and his family didn’t even live in the same state.

Reyes was kneeling in front of him with her fingers on the pulse beat in his wrist and she turned to look up at Skinner.

“I think he’s in shock,” she said.

And he didn’t remember much after that until they got back to DC.


	2. Scully

She’d told him to go. It was the hardest thing she’s ever done.

_“You have to go, Mulder, they’re trying to kill you.”_

_“If I stay, we can figure out why.”_

_Motive. Motive was something people like her figured out after someone was already dead. Just the thought of it weighed her down. Pulled her to the earth. She sat heavily, winced._  

_“I can’t lose you, Mulder. I only just got you back.”_

_“But…” He looked down at the baby sleeping in his arms._

_“I’ve buried you once, Fox,” she said, the rest of her words getting caught up in a rush of emotion, “if I have to do it again, they’ll have to bury me with you.”_

_Mulder looked up at her. It was an effort, she could tell, for him to tear his eyes away from his son._

_“I can’t,” he whispered._

_“You have to.”_

Later, when his luggage was packed up and sitting in the middle of her living room, she felt the tight pull of the tether that bound them, like a rope stretching between her heart and his. When he left she knew that the tether would break, and that the recoil would knock her back. She just wasn’t sure how far.

_“Goodnight, sweet boy,” Mulder said, pressing his nose into the fragrant head of his son, taking a long pull._

_Mulder then passed the boy wordlessly back to his mother. They stood at her door._

_“Mulder-“ Scully said, her voice shaky._

_“Don’t.” He said, sharply. Then, more calmly after a deep breath, “Don’t. Don’t say goodbye. Only say goodnight.”_

_She kissed him, roughly, awkwardly, the human bundle between them making them both bend forward. She only had one free hand and she clung to him with it._  

_He clung back. Gave her a hard squeeze. She was grateful—she’d be able to feel it after he was gone._

  _“Goodnight.”_  

The night seemed endless. She was tired. Not just from the lack of sleep that was life with a newborn. Mulder was gone and she was tired. Weary beyond measure.

At least her mother was here. Maggie didn’t understand why Mulder had to go—Scully barely understood herself, but Maggie handled it with the grace and aplomb of a sailor’s wife.

Scully wasn’t okay.

She had a baby, but not a Mulder.

Her milk had just come in and she still couldn’t sit down unassisted, and her hormones were all over the place and it took nothing at all for her to cry. And she did. Almost more than the baby.

William. After his father. His grandfather’s too, but when she’d been sitting in the hospital in Georgia, filling out the paperwork, she wanted to name him after his father. Fox was a ridiculous name, but there were so many Williams around, you couldn’t miss. She stretched the truth when she told Mulder the provenance of the name. She’s still not sure why she did that.

Mulder.

She felt like she was about to crumple in on herself again when Maggie sat down next to her on the sofa and put a light hand on her knee.

“Imagine he’s at sea,” she said.

She pictured her mother on a Navy base, newly delivered of a child and alone. Pregnant and alone with a toddler. With two kids. With three.

“Oh, mom,” she said, feeling worse than she had before, knowing her mother was only trying to help. “ _Oh, mom.”_  The floodgates opened and she wept.

She wept for Mulder. For their child. For herself.

Later, she connected eyes and exchanged a warm smile with her mother as she was nursing William, a temporary sense of calm and peace washing over her, and she remembered a moment with Mulder, in those fleeting pacific days before they got their in vitro results, when the horizon still seemed tinged with hope.

_“What am I going to tell my mother?” She asked him, as they sat in their office._

_“What are you going to tell Bill?” He countered back, his eyes widening in humor and mock fright._

_“What_ are _we going to tell people?” She asked in all seriousness, standing up._

_Mulder stood too, coming around the desk to stand in front of her._

_“It’s nobody's business,” he said lightly._

_She gave him a skeptical look and he ran his hands lightly up and down her arms._

_“It doesn’t matter,” he finally said, his voice low. “No one knows how we are. No one gets it.”_

_“And what is_ it _?” She asked. “How_ are _we?”_

_In answer, he tipped his head forward, leaning his forehead against hers. His breath fanned out over her face, smelling of peppermint toothpaste, the tang of sunflower salt._

_“We’re…” he faltered for a moment. “We’re us.”_

And that was it, she thought, nuzzling William’s downy head.

Mulder was gone, but he wasn’t dead. They had a baby. A beautiful, healthy son.

They were still them. And no one could take that away.

 _Don’t say goodbye_ , he’d said. _Only say goodnight_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks, as always, to admiralty for the beta. Much love.


End file.
